The Alchemical Child

Chapter Fifteen

Sage jolted upright at Oriana's sharp tone. Had she done something wrong? She had originally thought that she'd been summoned to the palace to do sigil work, though perhaps that was foolish optimism fogging the memories of a death ritual.

Either way, she had to answer. "It's two of the base sigils combined, the plain triangle is fire, but if both upper-sides had been struck across with a line, it would become air. Since I only struck one side, I combined them to heat the air, although the sigil's interpretation is generally up to the will of the Sigilist."

Oriana nodded slowly. "And the circle?"

"The circle completes the sigil. You have to draw it around every one in order to transfer your energy into it."

Her eyes brightened with understanding. "You use your own energy to transmute?"

"Most Sigilists do, because it's easier to control the transmutation than taking energy from somewhere else. But there are other methods of obtaining energy, of course. Metallurgists use thermal energy from the forge, for example." She couldn't help adding, "But it's imprecise, even if you're able to perform more impressive transmutations."

That was an understatement. Metallurgists could transmute iron nails into copper by the end of their first-year, whereas Sigilists would be lucky if they achieved any form of metal transmutation by the time they were Scholars; the energy that was required from the mortal body was simply too great for most.

Oriana brushed her fingers over the floorboards and Sage flinched. "Fascinating," she murmured. "How many of these sigils do you know?"

Sage shrugged a shoulder in what she hoped was a humble way. "A couple hundred from memory."

"And there are infinite ways of combining them to produce a desired effect?"

"I guess there must be," Sage said. "Scholars are always working to craft new ones. But if you draw too many sigils to combine into one, you have to write them out like a sentence, which some people find less complicated anyway, even if it takes more time. Although every Sigilist's transmutation must begin with at least one of the four base elements."

"Fire and air," Oriana said to herself. "Water and earth."

Sage wasn't surprised that she didn't know the basics of Sigilism—very few people did. With the lowest potential for producing gold and requiring the greatest amount of patience and personal exertion, it was far from the most fashionable of the Alchemical Arts. The University would likely stop teaching it were it not for its more general conveniences.

"All that power," the fae mused, "at the tips of your fingers."

And she looked down at her own fingers, where gold had spread from skin as easily as frost across glass. Sage tucked her nails into her palm, because she knew that her power was not the same as Oriana's. She had been taught it every day as a Student. For all the University's triumphs, no alchemist had ever performed the transmutation of gold.

"All that power," Oriana repeated, "and yet you still yearn for the one thing beyond your reach. And it is not for knowledge's sake. It's not even for power, as the fae are already made to live beneath you. It is merely an obsession. Greed alone compels you."

As close as Sage was crouched to Oriana, she felt that they had drawn back from one another. Oriana was no longer looking at her, turning her head away as she would from an animal squatting in the street. Sage stood, an inexplicable shame heating her face until she questioned how she had ever found the room cold. Above their heads, the bells began to ring.

Had it only been an hour? It felt both too long and too short for the excruciating time Sage had spent in the palace. When the ringing ceased, Oriana was staring towards the balcony as if she hadn't heard the bells at all. She said, "You are done for today, Sage."

When Sage didn't move, Oriana heaved a sigh. "If you leave now, I will tell the Steward who comes to fetch you this afternoon that you worked yours hours in full before I dismissed you, so you'll get your day's wage with no further inquiries."

Sage flushed further to think that Oriana had seen her so transparently, even though she knew her well-worn coat likely seemed to be stitched-up scraps to everyone in the palace. When the pitcher had become gold, had her eyes dilated to take in every illicit glisten and gleam? Had Sage confirmed Oriana's belief of the University's obsession in that single second? The questions hummed through her mind as loud as any bell, deafening and increasingly nauseating. She had never gotten her sip of water.

"Ok, I'll just go back down the tower then?"

Oriana smiled wanly at the ceiling. "There's only one way down."

"Right," muttered Sage, and then she was taking the stairs two at a time into the dark, stumbling out beneath the tapestry and along the corridor of portraits. The palace whirled past and Sage could hear her sister laughing at just how spectacularly she had failed within an hour. She fully expected a notice of dismissal to be hanging from her postbox by the time she got home. Her eyes burned at the thought, and if any Stewards saw her lift her white sleeves over her face as she passed through the fluttering curtains, they did not stop her.

The least she could do was spare herself the embarrassment of being handed her dismissal in person, so instead of walking to a tram station, Sage pressed on into the city. The townhouses looked squat and grey compared to the splendour of the palace, but Sage knew that their pocked stones were centuries old, their crystal windows uncracked and perfectly clear. These were the homes of the best alchemists in the city, those who had made names for themselves by transmuting metals into the smoothest silver, crafting and combining sigils previously unknown, and unravelling the secrets of the elements in the finest laboratories with the most modern equipment.

It simply wasn't possible that Valerie was living here in the west of the city. This was where the Council and their families bought their homes with gated gardens and underground wine cellars. This was the crystal comfort that wealth could afford. Nobody here picked through their pockets for spare change, or weighed loose buttons against loaves of bread. Yet as Sage withdrew her mother's letter and reread the address scrawled there, she could find no fault.

She followed extravagant street signs into an unfamiliar part of the city where even the snow had fallen on the pavement as elegantly as icing on the cakes displayed in its patisseries. The address had taken her to a millinery with a faceless, cotton head in its window. An orange ribbon was tied around its disembodied neck and it wore a feathered, indigo hat. It was almost comical to think of Valerie living in such a gaudy shop, but the silver number above the knocker matched the one on Sage's paper, so she sucked in a breath and opened the door.